


Dancing Blind

by last_illusions (injured_eternity)



Category: CSI: NY
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-20
Updated: 2007-08-20
Packaged: 2017-10-17 09:26:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/injured_eternity/pseuds/last_illusions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Though they’re attempting to lead one another, they’re both dancing blind. MS indicative, but not explicit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dancing Blind

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of a character study on Mac and Stella, originally supposed to be a lighter piece based on dinner or office conversation. As per usual, the “light” did not work very well.
> 
> Spoilers: 4x01 ["Can You Hear Me Now?"]; 4x02 ["The Deep"]; 4x03 ["You Only Die Once"]

Detective Mac Taylor bites back another muted sigh—certainly not his first of the day, and, despite there being less than two hours to go until the clocks proclaim the midnight hour, he’s equally certain that it isn’t his last. Running his hand over four days’ worth of five-o’-clock shadow and detachedly realizing that he’s never shown up at work in such a state, he turns back to his report.

That works for an exhaustive two minutes; then his attention is caught again, this time by Peyton’s photo on his desk. He sighs again—his fortune-telling skills are sharper than he thought—and turns away, but that only serves to put the suitcase sticker on the side of his kit directly into his line of sight. The sigh diffuses, abrogated by a groan he doesn’t care to give voice to: he really wishes he’d picked another day to restock his kit. He’s been studiously avoiding silence since he boarded the plane that morning, and he’d been successful for the most part, right up until about ten minutes ago. Once again, he turns around—right back to Peyton's picture. The groan escalates into a sound that hasn’t yet been granted a christening of its own, and tenacious, half-desperate fingers reach to flip the frame so that it’s facedown. On second thought, he picks it back up and shoves it resolutely into his bottom drawer.

“I’m still not buying that jet-lag story,” someone says from the doorway, and he starts, managing to slam his finger in the drawer as he does.

He looks up to see his partner leaning against the doorjamb, one foot bracing the heavy glass door open. A smile somewhere between a smirk and a genuine grin plays at her lips, but her sharp eyes pass over him, silently wondering what he isn’t telling her. It’s easier to pretend that he doesn’t notice the question in her eyes, so he does, returning her smile with one of his own despite feeling like he’s perjuring himself in a bellicose court of reality. But he doesn’t say any of that, opting instead for a mundane greeting that won’t yield any more arduous questions, and he can’t help but be thankful for the reprieve from his own thoughts as he gestures her in.

Taking a seat across from him, she surveys the paperwork piled on his desk and shakes her head, but all she says is, “Please tell me you aren’t trying to catch up on ten days’ worth of paper in twenty-four hours.”

“Eight hours, actually,” he says, more to annoy her than because it’s true, and the cynical voice in the back of his head tells him that he should have gone into theatre, because they’re both faking a lightness they don’t feel.

“Only you, Mac,” comes the dry response.

Her gaze shifts imperceptibly, so that she’s looking at the awkwardly derelict spot where Peyton’s photo stood not five minutes ago, and he realizes belatedly that she saw him move it. He can only hope she doesn’t ask, because cognition seems to be a lacking faculty these days, and he’s not at all sure he can explain what happened; he’s not even sure he _knows_ what happened. If he doesn’t even have a clue as to why they couldn’t forgo the glass office (in the temp building, no less, not even the actual lab), he’s got not the slightest insight to his and Peyton’s… he doesn’t actually know what to call it anymore.

Easily recognizing his hesitance for what it is, she moves on. “Why don’t you go home?”

There are ways of getting Mac Taylor to talk, and Stella Bonasera knows every one of them. They’ve been partners too long for her to not be able to read him, and she also knows with resounding clarity that pushing him will garner nothing useful.

“This needs to get done,” he protests, waving vaguely at his desk, but it lacks potency, and she knows it.

“Not tonight it doesn’t,” she counters. “You already blew up the labs—right before you ran off and left us for London, I might add,” she teases him shamelessly. “I think you’ve done enough for the next couple years, don’t you?”

A laugh escapes him in an exhaled breath, and he gives her credit for keeping a straight face. The brass had _not_ been pleased that his pipe bomb had blown up the majority of the lab, though in his defence, he’d had to point out that he wasn’t the one who’d demolished their vault door.

“Touché. But I should still—”

“Go home and get some sleep,” she finishes for him. Her tone says that getting her way is a foregone conclusion, making him think that she should have been an attorney. “Have you eaten anything?”

At that, he pauses; he actually hasn’t the foggiest inkling. The last thing he remembers resembling food was… airline food, and he’d rather gnaw off his own arm than survive on that cardboard. The stuff he’d _burned_ when he’d been enlisted tasted better.

Correctly interpreting his silence as a no, she stands. “In that case, you’re eating before you get home.” Once again, she leaves him no room for argument, and if he’s honest with himself, he really doesn’t have the energy left to do so, anyway. So he nods instead, and she shoots him a triumphant smile that says she’s won. “Good. Let me grab my things.”

Without pausing to see if he has a response, she disappears back out the door and returns in a few minutes with her bag and coat in hand. Rummaging around for her keys, she pushes his door back open. “Come on—what do you feel like?”

He doesn’t know—he can’t remember the last time he felt so uncertain, but he doesn’t tell her that—and simply shrugs as he lets the door shut behind them. Though they keep walking, he feels like she’s stopped to stare at him as the silence he doesn’t want starts to step out of the waiting elevator.

“Something light,” he says finally, more for sake of saying something equivocal enough to get by than because he actually means it.

A wry half smile touches her lips. “You know, that deli down the street gets more business from our labs than I would have thought possible.”

The conversation dissolves from there, distinctly innocuous as they decide to walk the block-and-a-half to the little Italian deli. The night is cool, a light breeze just enough to lift the blanket of summer heat from the city, and the crowds are surprisingly light. The stars blink at them from the sky, almost as though they taunt the dark ambivalence of his mood, laughing at him because they hold a certitude in their existence that he lost a long time ago. He tries not to look at them, but then he’s forced to look obdurate problems for which he has no answers in the face, so he does his best not to look at anything.

By now he’s lost complete track of the conversation, because a moment ago it was inane remarks about weather, and now Stella’s saying something about a case she caught while he was away (it’s all he can do to not flinch at that), but he’s saved by the bell, pulling the door of the deli open to avoid having to attempt formulating a comprehensible response. They place their orders, and for a moment he doesn’t have to think past what, exactly, he wishes to have for a painfully late supper—dinner; Peyton’s rubbing off on him—and convincing Stella to let him pay, but then they take a booth towards the back, and that vacuum of silence looms ahead once more.

He starts talking about the stock market, purely for the sake of _talking_ , and Stella looks for a moment as though she’s walked into a door. They both know perfectly well that he really doesn’t give much of a damn about the market unless he’s got nothing but _The Wall Street Journal_ left in a waiting room, but she abstains from commenting, and he’s silently grateful. When he’s exhausted the ten minutes’ worth of his connection to the NYSE, protracting it out far longer than it has any right to be, she shrugs and starts to talk about the weather report.

They continue to sit across from one another, talking for sake of filling the gaping silence, but neither has a viable method of operation tonight. The same malady afflicts them both, a monochrome delirium in which there are too many questions and not nearly enough answers, but the will they once had to surmount it is enervated, debilitated beyond the point of usefulness, and so they can neither of them admit to the other that this is confusing as all hell. The stoics would be proud.

Eventually, a fear of silence merges with exhaustion and alcohol to form a victorious triumvirate, breaking down the abyssal nihility that lies between them. He finally announces that Peyton decided to stay in London, interrupting Stella in the midst of a veritable monologue on the film _Hairspray_ , and she turns to him in shock, well aware that she is sober and he is not. Later, he’ll credit her for the way she turns the conversation, tugging on the questions so gently that he doesn’t realise she’s pulling the answers out with them. For now, though, he remains almost beatifically unaware, telling her that he and Peyton made the decision not to continue a long distance relationship, that part of him is bitterly aware that she rendered a painfully clear verdict: her job over him. When he says that he can hardly blame her, surprise flashes through Stella’s eyes, but his own are fixed resolutely upon the scarred varnish of the tabletop, and he misses it.

Before he can say more, he registers that she’s telling him something about closing, and he glances at his watch. It’s now midnight, so they stand, putting their trays on top of the trashcan as they walk out the door with a nod to the owner. Stella’s shooting concerned looks his way, but he remains carefully oblivious to them—perchance if he doesn’t acknowledge them, she won’t pursue them. The night has remained peculiarly clear, and the fatuous topics of conversation dissipate during the ten minutes it takes for them to reach the lab garages. Almost hesitantly—and he notes the incongruity of that hesitance, though he neglects to acknowledge it—she offers him a ride home; after a moment of deliberation on his own behalf, he complies.

The concerned looks haven’t stopped, but he circumvents the impending questions by stepping in front of her to open the driver’s door. A half smile is his thanks, and he responds with one of his own—one that doesn’t quite reach his eyes and holds not nearly enough sincerity. They drive back to his place in silence, and when she pulls up in front of his home, she puts the car in park, sets the brake, and turns to him, leaving the engine running.

He waits for her to speak, but she doesn’t say a word, so he looks up at her, puzzled. _Then_ she leans forward slightly, and though there is sympathy in her eyes, she has not relegated either of them to pity. “I’m sorry, Mac. She… she doesn’t know quite what she gave up.”

 _Because you never showed her who you used to be._ She doesn’t utter that aloud, but she thinks it, and he feels it, because he’s been thinking the same thing since Peyton told him she wasn’t flying back. He nods, offering her the same half smile he gave her earlier, and pushes the door open, thanking her for the ride home. She merely nods in response, waiting until he’s gotten the front door open before putting the car in gear and pulling away from the curb.

Standing in the doorway for a moment, he watches her leave, and the masochistic part of him wonders at the strange pattern that they’ve been following for at least a year now. He’s unaware of the steps; she’s wearing a blindfold; and though they’re attempting to lead one another, they’re both dancing blind.

  
 _Finis._

 _Feedback is always appreciated_.


End file.
